985. Purveyor of Personals.—A Russian named Romeitre started this enterprise in a small way. Now we have press-clipping bureaus so large as to employ seventy persons each. In some of these places from 5,000 to 7,000 papers are read every day, and the weekly clippings amount to more than 100,000. There are now press-clipping bureaus in nearly all of our large cities.
986. Gold on Sea Bottom.—Another class of men make money out of other men’s misfortunes; that is, by stripping wrecks of their valuables. Others secure the services of divers and search the bottom of the ocean, where vessels containing treasures are supposed to have gone down. A few years ago a company from England went with divers to a place near Bermuda, where a vessel had been sunk a long time before, and secured from the wreck the sum of $1,500,000.
987. Rare Books.—The art of book collecting has been pursued with profit by some persons. It requires no capital, if one simply confines his efforts to book-stalls, though, if pursued on a large scale, money is required for advertising and correspondence. Mr. Charles B. Foote, of New York City, is a veteran bibliophile, and has made a specialty of first editions. Recently he made three auction sales of his stores, and realized more than $20,000, and his home is full of treasures.
988. Old Italian Violins.—They sell at prices ranging from $500 to $5,000, when you can buy them at all, which is seldom, for they are mostly in the hands of wealthy collectors. Now we will let you into a great secret. It is not the kind of wood or the form of the instrument alone which produces the rare quality of sound, but it lies also in the kind of varnish used. By experimenting with varnish, you can produce a “Stradivarius,” which will sell for almost any amount you choose to ask.
989. Magic Silk.—It seems like the trick of the magician to speak of turning cotton into silk, but it can actually be done, or at least cotton can be made to resemble silk, so that discrimination between the two fabrics is impossible. About fifty years ago, one Mercer, a French chemist, showed that cotton when subjected to the action of concentrated acid or alkalies, contracts and has a greater affinity for dyes, but it has only just been discovered that “mercerization” gives also a brilliant luster to the cotton. The cotton is stretched violently during the operation, and when an energetic rubbing is added to the tension the tissue receives a permanent luster. It thus replaces silk at a fraction of its cost, and offers a splendid chance for financial enterprise.
990. The Gold Cure.—If the gold cure for which so much is claimed can really take away the appetite for liquor, there is an immense field for its exercise and room for the making of many fortunes in the cure of America’s drunkards. In the United States alone an exceedingly moderate estimate makes the number of this unfortunate class 1,600,000. At the very modest calculation that only one-tenth of these can be induced to try the cure, and if each case nets the proprietor of the institution only $25—and the estimate should probably be doubled and even trebled—there are $15,000,000 in it for the public benefactors who can thus curb the evil of dram-drinking.
991. The Telephone Newspaper.—Here is an idea for newspaper men: In Budapest, Hungary, there is a telephone newspaper, the first and only one in the world. The main office is in telephone communication with the Reichstadt (corresponding to our Congress), and it often happens that important speeches are known to the public while the speaker is still addressing the house; the latest reports from stock exchanges as well as political news are heard before any paper has printed them, a short summary of all important items is given at noon and again in the evening; subscribers are entertained with music and literary articles in the evenings, the latter being often spoken into the telephone by the original authors. The cost is only two cents a day, and the company are said to be making money even at that figure.
992. Race and Stock Tippers.—In addition to the regular brokers who supply tips to their customers, there is now a set of professional tippers who profess to have “inside information,” and make it a business to give tips to anybody who will pay for them. They receive in some cases a fixed sum from their patrons, and in other cases they take a liberal percentage of the profits.
993. Promoters.—This is a new vocation. The promoter “promotes” anything and everything that will pay. If you want to accomplish anything from the launching of a railroad enterprise to the selling of a penny patent, you pay the “promoter” a certain sum to do the work. He buys influence, lobbies legislators, controls newspapers and hypnotizes the public generally. Not all promoters come as high as Mr. Ernest Tooley, whose own price can be imagined when he claims to have paid $250,000 to English peers for their influence; yet we learn that the American Tin Plate Company gave the promoters of the Trust $10,000,000 in stock for their work.